tammara webber
Brave
a Contours of the Heart® novel
BRAVE
Copyright © 2017 by Tammara Webber
eBook ISBN: 978-0-9994264-0-1
Contours of the Heart® is a registered trademark of Tammara Webber
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover image copyright © Brandon Lyon, 2015
Cover Design by Damonza
To MiShaun
Who once upon a time
was brave enough to ask her unpublished,
aspiring-writer friend to put her in a book
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Epilogue
Books by Tammara Webber
Acknowledgments
Further Reading
About the Author
Prologue
1980
Jeffrey McIntyre grinned as he shut the door of the cramped, ramshackle trailer serving as on-site office, boardroom, lunchroom, and occasional nap quarters for the small, would-be construction company he and his partner had pitched to the men he’d just escorted out the door. All three were prominent local businessmen, and all three were loaded. They were too sharp-witted to give immediate approval, of course. They hadn’t gotten where they were with knee-jerk decisions lacking due diligence, and Jeff respected that. But his hand burned pleasantly from their firm-gripped shakes, each grasp imparting a soundless but undeniable gut-level verdict: yes.
The stuffy loan officers at the big banks, high-and-mighty gatekeepers of industry, hadn’t wanted to take a chance on a couple of twenty-six-year-olds with vision. He and Zeke had been shown the door enough times for lesser men to give up and slink away like chastised schoolboys. Well, all those arrogant pricks could keep their damn money and fuck right off, because McIntyre & James Construction was about to have investors.
Jeff yanked at the unfamiliar tie and popped the top button clear, freeing his thick neck from the stranglehold of the starchy shirt his debutante fiancée had declared obligatory if he really meant business. He might resent her snooty interference, but she’d been right and he knew it, so he’d heeded her advice. Grin spreading, he turned to meet his partner’s more restrained smile.
Ezekiel James had always been more naturally cautious. He was the voice of reason when Jeff wanted to barrel ahead, eternally certain of victory and dead wrong as often as he was right. Despite his characteristic composure, Zeke’s eyes were wide and lit with expectant eagerness. Elbows on knees and hands knotted, he sat forward in one of two worn leather desk chairs they’d found at a used-office-furniture store in east Fort Worth. His wedding band glinted yellow against his dark skin. His pretty little wife was ready to start trying for a baby, he’d confided last week. He wanted to make her happy, but his prudent temperament told him he and Jeff had a company to establish before either of them could start a family.
“So. What do you think?” Zeke asked. His soft-spoken inquiry was almost frustrating. How could he not be crazy with excitement when Jeff was barely containing the urge to whoop with pleasure and curse all the naysayers they’d encountered right to their smug faces?
But Jeff knew his friend’s grim history—his parents breaking their backs, working their hands raw at multiple menial jobs to put food on the table for Zeke and Lila, his little sister. His mother had died of lung cancer without ever picking up a cigarette; they’d buried her eight years ago. His father had lost the use of his right arm a few months later when a heavy piece of machinery fell on him at his warehouse job. He’d been slightly inebriated at the time, and before he’d even left the county hospital, the company had fired him and stripped him of disability benefits. Though he could have sued to regain them, it was hard to find a lawyer who’d take the case of a drunk-on-the-job black laborer—or so he’d told Zeke when pressed.
“It’s too late anyways now, son,” his father had said. “Best to just push on through.”
Zeke had known who’d have to do the pushing.
Eighteen and quietly ambitious, he’d planned to go to college. But he couldn’t afford to attend classes at the junior college while supporting his motherless sister, himself, and a father whose sorrow clung to his skin like days-old sweat, so he got a job working construction. It was grueling, sometimes dangerous work—especially for a young man who couldn’t keep his woolgathering mind from envisioning ways to make the spaces he built more useful and visually appealing—but it paid better than anything else he was qualified to do.
A year prior, he’d been paired with Jeff on a North Dallas site. As the August temperatures soared up to and over one hundred degrees, they framed track houses—every one a cookie-cutter version of all the rest. While they worked, he’d told Jeff about the luxurious-for-the-client and practical-for-the-company concepts he’d proposed that the housing foremen always dismissed. Recessed lighting and niches, alcoves, and seating nooks, built-ins that took advantage of otherwise unserviceable spaces. Over lunch at a nearby hole-in-the-wall barbeque joint, where Jeff was often the lone white man, Zeke sketched out customizable alternatives to the floor plans.
“They keep on telling me some manner of ‘We got us designers and architects for that shit, man—nobody needs your big ideas here. Just get back to work and hang the damned cabinets,’ and that was that,” he said.
“Idiots,” Jeff mumbled, thumbing through the neatly drawn, detailed sketches. “They wouldn’t know a good idea if it bit ’em in the ass and turned into a tail.” He’d looked Zeke right in the eye. “We should form our own company, man. Make some real money. We ain’t cut out for this small-minded shit.”
Lila, Zeke’s little sister, had just graduated with honors from Texas Tech and was a newly minted teacher in Burleson. Alcohol had preserved their father’s grief rather than chasing it away, but he was an unobtrusive, desolate drunk, and neither of his children could bear to rebuke him for it. They’d made a pact between them to care for him. For the first time, Ezekiel James was his own man, ready to take a Jeffrey McIntyre sort of risk.
“Well?” he pressed, bringing Jeff back to the present. “Do you think any of them will lend us the money?”
Jeff grinned like a man who meant to run the world and had just acquired the clearance to do so. “I think their rich asses want in, my brutha,” he drawled, throwing his six-two frame into a creaky desk chair and sprawling
his long legs wide. “This whole goddamn area is set for a population explosion in the next decade. We know it. They know it. There’s fortunes to be made, and if they have a lick of sense between the three of them—and buddy, we know they do—they’ll all want in.”
chapter
One
2014
Daddy had whistled his way past me and out the door two minutes ago, ready to drive us both to work. Work—as in my first postcollege job. Where I would be working for my father. Or rather, working for someone who reported to the someone who reported to my father. I felt certain that all the employees who’d earned their positions at Jeffrey McIntyre Custom Homes were thrilled shitless to have me coming on board.
Checking the three-way mirror nestled into the sconce-lit alcove of the mudroom, I scanned myself one more time. Sensible three-inch Ferragamo pumps (nude), sensible DVF wrap dress (chocolate), sensible Michael Kors bag that felt like luggage on my arm compared to the lip-gloss-and-ID-holding crossbodies I was used to flinging over my shoulder.
In my dark shades, I looked like my mother. I might not mind if I weren’t twenty-two and in no rush to look “amazing for fifty-seven”—a commendation she received often from envious peers. Mom wasn’t opposed to availing herself of the best personal trainers and cosmetic procedures money could buy, and her stylist was booked out months in advance despite fees that would choke a horse. Her entire social circle did the same, though few got her results. Hence the envy.
Despite my lack of enthusiasm to ever be middle-aged, the mirror told me how I’d wear it when it came. Could be worse. For some blasted reason, that thought unnerved me rather than inspiring appreciation for my genetics. I felt hollow, as if there was nothing of me about me. But that was nothing new.
In my giant bag was a red leather portfolio with my initials etched into a gold-plated square right in the center, Mom-gifted to commemorate my Very First Day. Like kindergarten. I’d added a legal pad, HR-required documents, pens in three colors, a mechanical pencil, and an outdated finance calculator that I hoped to God I wouldn’t need because I’d been into gluing rhinestones to everything when I took precal freshman year, and it was blinged to hell and back.
I looked like I was playing dress-up: Professional Business Chick edition.
Suck it up, McIntyre, I told myself. Time to adult.
• • • • • • • • • •
As Daddy parked in his reserved spot, I stared up at the hewn limestone, raw timber, and glass structure that gave the impression of eighteenth-century Spanish architecture, but newer. Way newer. The office building housing JMCH was a testament to its own distinctive design abilities—just like my parents’ Southlake home, which looked as though a European castle had plopped smack down in North Texas, turrets and all. It lacked only a moat and a drawbridge—something my father had pretend-lamented every time a new boy showed up at the door when I was in high school.
“Ready, Princess?”
I halted a groan before it began. I had exploited my youngest-child, only-daughter status my entire life, batting my lashes to get my way from age two if video footage could be believed. My father ate it up, and I kept shoveling. It wouldn’t be fair to hold that against him now. But.
“Maybe it’s time to drop that nickname, Daddy. Considering the fact that everyone in there has correct preconceived notions of how I got this position.”
He chuckled. “You’re beautiful, degreed, and perfectly suited for this position, Prin—Erin.”
“I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology. That doesn’t exactly scream I know everything about building custom homes.”
“Your name’s on the building, honey.” He pointed. “That does all the hollering necessary.” He patted my knee before exiting the truck.
Which is exactly my point?
I slid down from the passenger side of his tank-sized F-450 King Ranch, holding my dress to my thigh to prevent giving a free show to anyone staring out one of those gleaming, stone-framed windows. “No need for a free show!” was a thing Nana, Mom’s mother, began chiding me with when I was eleven, no matter how confusing that statement was then, how mortifying at thirteen, or how infuriating by seventeen. I’d never been able to get it out of my head.
Daddy’s monster pickup could hold five big guys, tow a bunch of lesser pickups, or haul a small herd of elephants, but most of the time it hauled my parents and Jack, their spoiled English bulldog, around town or on occasional forays into Fort Worth or Dallas. During the week, Mom drove a Mercedes SUV. To counter the environmental damage they generated, I’d requested a hybrid car for my graduation gift. I probably should have asked for a bicycle.
When we entered the JMCH building, heads swiveled and whispers hummed across the marble floor of the open atrium. I felt like a hayseed beauty queen on a 4-H float and fought an intense urge to wave like parade royalty just to be a smartass. But I couldn’t blame them for staring. I was the boss’s daughter. Privilege and entitlement wrapped in money. The expressions my new coworkers wore ranged from wide-eyed curiosity (the receptionist, who looked like a twelve-year-old wearing half a pound of mascara) to veiled animosity (some guy glaring down from the open gallery of the second level as though his sworn enemy had just breached the castle walls). Sheesh.
I thanked God that I’d always had a knack for facial recognition even if names escaped me, fixed a sensible, friendly smile on my face, and droned, “Nice to meet you,” or “Nice to see you again,” to anyone who made eye contact. I even bestowed a diplomatic smile toward the man on the second floor. He turned and disappeared.
“Great,” I muttered. I already had a hater, and I’d barely set foot in the damned door.
We boarded the elevator and I whooped an internal Thank you, Jesus when Daddy pressed the three, relieved to skip a face-to-face encounter with Mr. Hostile for now. Polished marble gave way to plush, footfall-absorbing carpet as we turned toward the two huge, windowed offices at the back. Daddy rapped twice on the open door to the smartly decorated corner office of his CFO and walked in without waiting for a response.
Hank Greene was my uncle in all but actual kinship. His family and mine went way back; he, Daddy, and Bud Sager had launched JMCH before I or any of my three older brothers were born. From last-minute perusing of the website, I’d learned that Bud had retired a few years ago and his nephew, Ted, was the current Vice President of Operations. At least nepotism wasn’t a new concept here. Yay?
“Erin—how are you, honey?” Uncle Hank asked, smiling and coming around the huge mahogany desk, which was so shiny I could see my shoes reflected in the glossy front panel as I stepped forward.
I stretched out my hand and opted for a professional greeting. “Mr. Greene—it’s nice to see you again.”
He and my father shared corresponding smirks. “Mr. Greene, is it? Ha. Ha.” He took my hand and patted it with his other, much like Daddy had patted my knee earlier. They might as well boop me on the head and hand me a face-sized lollipop, for chrissake.
“She’s worried people will think she’s only here because she’s my daughter.” Daddy made that valid concern sound absurd.
Hank blinked and chuckled. “Now, now. Worse things to be accused of than being the beneficiary of a little harmless familial bias.”
He adjusted the thin pewter frames that perfectly offset his thick graying hair and manicured brows. No doubt his wife was responsible for that flawless coordination. Miranda Greene was as much of a fashionista as my mother, if not more. The Greenes had two children—one boy, one girl—both in college now. They’d been mostly raised by a live-in au pair before au pairs were even a thing. Hank and Miranda attended championship games and recitals, but the au pair, who’d looked like a Swedish model, spoke several languages, and knew CPR, had been the one shuttling the kids to sports practices and music lessons until they could shuttle themselves.
Miranda didn’t volunteer like Mom did or have a job that I knew of. Years ago, I’d asked Mom what Miranda did all day, t
hinking maybe she worked at home, writing romance novels or day-trading stocks or managing a fashion blog. I was about to enter high school and was considering career options.
“Oh, she works all right,” Mom said, her tone superior. “She slaves twenty-four-seven at the career she trained for—husbandry.” She’d tapped the canvas Whole Foods bag she’d just brought in before leaving the room. “Put these things away, would you, sweetie?”
I hadn’t known what she meant, but the youngest of my brothers, Pax, snorted. He was standing in front of the stainless Sub-Zero fridge, door open—per usual if he was in the kitchen.
“What,” I said, confused. “I don’t get it.”
“Husbandry—accent on husband. Comprende?” He grabbed the orange juice carton labeled PAX—proof that Mom had given up all hope that he’d ever learn basic manners—and chugged it.
The mental lightbulb clicked on and I laughed and groaned, but husbandry sounded like a repugnant existence—looking after some man, day after day, forever. I loved Uncle Hank and Daddy, but they were not my idea of life goals.
“Dad started warning me about girls majoring in husbandry when I was your age. He gave me a box of Trojans and literally said, ‘Wrap it before you tap it.’”
“Eww, gross.” Fourteen-year-old me couldn’t imagine any girl dumb enough to have sex with my eighteen-year-old brother at all, let alone for the purpose of having to do it with him only the rest of her natural-born days. Back then Pax’s favorite pastime was farting all the way down the hallway like a puttering antique car that backfired once he reached my bedroom doorway. His other hobbies had included belching mangled lyrics to songs I liked, stealing food off my plate at dinner, and trying to hug me into his armpit right after lifting weights.
Hard to believe he was now a twenty-six-year-old minor league ballplayer, recently engaged to one of his groupies (she “did hair”—her words—at a Supercuts near his apartment in Albuquerque and had recognized him when he wandered in for a cut). He’d rejected all my parents’ efforts to convince him to finish school or “get a real job” and seemed determined to grow up at his own pace. While Daddy hadn’t officially despaired where his youngest son was concerned, he’d long since begun directing his unsolicited career advice on the older two—Leo, a construction foreman at JMCH, and Foster, a junior associate at a Dallas law firm.